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Please see Acknowledgments listed below due to space.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

A New Blog...

I have created another family and/or local history blog at blogspot.com, mainly to help me organize things better on this blog. I call it The Digital Annex and you can access it through my profile. On that blog I will post things that are indirectly related to the Claypoole family, and yet might be of use to other researchers. Some items will probably appear in both blogs especially some of the photos. You might want to look it over when I actually post something interesting there! Hopefully it will be a place where stray and otherwise lost clues and people might be found. I always accumulate stray bits of information and I might as well share them.

A few notes about my postings here:

I am exploring all descendants, as well as allied families, of James Claypoole of Armstrong County, but at least for now, not in a truly systematic way. One reason for the somewhat topical approach is lack or recent work on this material. I haven’t done much in this line for some time, I also just moved and that was more chaotic than planned, so as I unpack I'm trying to organize my material and I thought that by providing it online for the enjoyment and enlightenment of others was an excellent motivator, it forces me to be more focused on organizing, preserving and transmitting this information.
N.B.: I will not post photos of any living individual(s), nor will I write about any living individual beyond stating they are the child of so and so, except when I have obtained their written and verbal permission to do so.

I hope those that find this site will alert me to any errors so I might also improve the quality of the material. Some photos or articles may need to be reposted at a later date if significant new materials or corrections are forthcoming.

I am still struggling to find an appropriate template to follow for providing the information here, and I may also re-post for that reason. Please note this is a work in progress for a more traditional Claypoole book I’ve been working intermittently since 1994/5. I had lost interest after I suffered a huge computer crash in 1999 without adequate backup of my materials and I frankly didn’t feel up to the task of starting over. I realized that I need to push on and Louis Claypoole, Kathie Young, and Barry Chapman have all fired me up to do so again.

Also when this blog goes exploring the allied families or the distaff family lines, I will probably only go back one or two generations at most (unless something significant needs to be unearthed), and if I have a surfeit of material on those lines I will return to them later, or more likely I’ll create a separate blog to manage that/those family line(s).

Two cases in point: My grandmother Claypoole's maiden name was McMunn and at some point I will probably start a McMunn and/or Miller Family page to provide a similar service for her line, the same with the Cook line.

In some cases the relatives of James Claypoole are heavily inter-married often through several generations. This will provide a challenge, so please help if you can. I am also more interested in mining the ancient part of the family in Armstrong County say 1770-1890, for more detail to flesh out the realities of daily life. I don’t want to create a comprehensive family tree type site (though that may be a by-product), but rather bring people back to life where that is possible through magnifying and focusing all the surviving source material. I will post information here, first in factual digests, and then later create narrative histories with illustrations, photos, and footnotes, the whole nine yards.

As I post things I will try to acknowledge my sources even in the embryonic stage.

Photos that I know are still copyrighted will not be posted without permission from the holder, when I doubt I would ask you not to copy, paste, or link them to any other site without contacting me first.

I will also attempt to eventually house my entire collection of copies and original family photos and documents on line for the benefit of all, and to help preserve them from wear and tear, destruction, or loss.

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Acknowledgments

This will be far too brief to begin with, so please forgive me if I ommitt anyone or anything, but there are really too many, but I wanted to thank those who were first or foremost in the process that lead to the creation of this blog.

First my Mother, Fay Anne, who opened my eyes to the richness of our family history, and my father James who ensured that I could proceed down this path.

My grandparents Merle and Alice who personified the good old ways.

My Aunts: Judy, Shirley and Nancy for helping and sharing at all times.

My great Aunts and Uncles, especially Dorothy, Vern, and Beatty without whom so much information would have been lost.

The congregation of Franklin Union Baptist, who opened their attics, minds, and hearts to me.

To Evelyn Claypoole Bracken without whom we could hardly proceed into the past at all (or perhaps receded?!).

To the many cousins who share so often so much.

And most recently and most especially to Barry Chapman of Tasmania, Australia and Kathie Young, who have together resolved something that had truly begun to puzzle me, and whose excellant research is summarized on the Claypoole Family website. And to my sister Erin, who helped stoke the fires of memory.

I will add and update specific thanks and acknowledgments in the places where they are most appropriate. Especially for contributions to original research. I hope to properly credit all researchers original work, and/or to thank those who have allowed me to see and share historical sources whether they are stories, documents, or artifacts.

Also I hope to properly list and acknowledge any secondary sources of information, so that others may check, rethink, verify, and explore the threads of this story.

Please alert me to any omissions, mistakes, broken internet links, or errors of any kind. You may do so in the comments sections or at a new email address I hope to create just for this website.